Developing a digital ocean to protect marine biodiversity

The issues of use (fishing, aquaculture) and conservation of marine biodiversity, in the context of global change, face technological challenges and knowledge barriers that must be overcome. In the marine environment, in situ observation has always been a major challenge, as sea water, unlike air, allows little or no electromagnetic waves to pass through. As a result, marine observation has always been very constrained and limited, but the development of new sensors, listening stations and robots is opening up new horizons and making it possible to track marine animals and study their individual and/or collective movements. Further technological innovations are still needed to understand the underlying physiological and ethological processes and thus the responses of organisms to their environment. Similarly, observatories must be maintained in order to qualify the evolution of marine populations and communities.
In addition to the "Observation" challenge, understanding the evolution of marine ecosystems also requires the collection, processing and modelling of a considerable amount of in situ and model data. In order to gain an integrated understanding of the effects of human activities on organisms, the functioning and the structure of marine ecosystems, complex models, known as End-to-End models (multi-compartment, multi-scale and multi-use), have been developed and must now be completed so that they can be used as management tools (whether in the context of estimating quantities of interest or producing scenarios). To do this, it will be necessary to formalise the new knowledge in a theoretical, mechanistic or statistical manner, then to confront these conceptualisations with the data while integrating new computer approaches, in particular those of big data and artificial intelligence.
The new digital tools are also an opportunity for scientific mediation and for raising the awareness of civil society about marine biodiversity and the issues involved in ensuring its sustainability.